"This is the Yaoshan Altar?"

Ascending the hill, a red square filled area came into view of Chen Han and Kong Jianwen.

The Yaoshan altar is located in the northeast direction of the ancient city, in order to build the altar, the Liangzhu people flattened the top of the mountain, and used the base stone to repair the edge, and built a rectangular bucket-shaped earthen platform, which is due north and south as a whole. Stone ridges have also been built on the hill below the earth platform to strengthen the slope or trim the movable plane.

The four sides of the earthen platform are facing four directions: east, south, west and north. The countertop is made of reddish-brown soil, and a zigzag groove is dug on the east side, and then the trench is filled with gray soil to form a triple earth-colored structure on the countertop.

Later, the altar was abandoned and used as a cemetery, where 13 high-ranking tombs were buried.

In addition to the Yaoshan altar, there is also a Huiguanshan altar near the ancient city of Liangzhu.

The Huiguan Mountain Altar is also quite similar to the Yaoshan Altar, it is located in the northwest of the ancient city of Liangzhu, and the altar plane on its top is also built using natural mountains. And to the west of the top of the altar, there is also a gray frame in the shape of a "hui".

These two altars are not ordinary.

It is not only an altar for the Liangzhu people to engage in sacrificial activities, but also an observatory for them to observe celestial phenomena.

The mid-latitude region of the northern hemisphere, where Liangzhu is located, is divided into four seasons a year, and the spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox and winter solstice are the dividing points of the four seasons of the year, which play an important guiding role in agricultural production.

In order to confirm the specific dates of these times, the people of Liangzhu used the direction of sunrise and sunset, combined with the altar, to distinguish the dates.

By the sun's sunrise and sunset, the sun shines on different areas of the altar, and the twenty-four solar terms can be distinguished.

Of course, in the Liangzhu era, there should be no 24 solar terms.

But!

The 24 solar terms of the Chinese people are actually used to guide agriculture.

It is definitely not a coincidence that the Yaoshan altar in Liangzhu can just distinguish the four seasons through the light of sunrise and sunset, but the Liangzhu people do use the altar to distinguish the date and guide agricultural farming.

Specifically, for example, the direction of sunrise on the winter solstice coincides with the direction of the southeast corner of the two altars, and the direction of sunrise on the summer solstice coincides with the direction of the northeast corner.

On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the sun rises and sets from the west of the altar.

Such an accurate pattern is obviously not a coincidence.

Through the four corners of the square, as well as a central axis in the middle, the three key dates of the summer solstice, autumn equinox, and winter solstice can be identified by sunrise and sunset.

If you want to subdivide it, as long as you divide the circumference of the altar into 24 equal parts, it can correspond to the 24 solar terms.

The specific use method is similar to the "Mars Search and Rescue" movie when the male protagonist wants to communicate with the earth, and communicates through handwritten letters.

The rover is the sun, and the various letters placed on the ground by the hero are the altar of Yaoshan.

When the sun points to whichever direction it is, it represents which solar term it is.

Simple and easy to use.

The shape of the whole altar is a square hollow structure, which looks a bit like a "hui" character, and the whole is red, which is very different from the yellow soil next to it.

In the center of the altar is a square clay platform, surrounded by a gray earthen ditch, the outermost part is a gravel face, and the outer edge is about 20 meters long. After the altar was abandoned, it was used as a cemetery, and there are seven tombs in the south and five in the north.

These tombs have been cleaned up.

The tomb is rich in burial goods, with more than 1,050 pieces (groups) of jade, pottery, lacquerware, etc.

Stone tool assemblage, the types of stone tools unearthed at the Yaoshan site include Yue, covered columnar ware, girdle stone ornaments and columnar tools.

The types of jade include crown-shaped ware, column-shaped ware with lid, trident ware, grouped cone-shaped ware, Yue, Cong, Huang, medallion, bracelet-shaped ware, plaque, belt hook, spinning wheel, bird, etc., but a large proportion of them are small tubes, beads, cones and other grouped ornaments.

Pottery assemblage, pottery has been unearthed in 12 tombs in Yaoshan.

A total of 55 pieces of pottery were unearthed in the entire cemetery.

Among them, there are 13 pieces of sand pottery.

From the number of excavated objects, it can be seen that the burials buried in Yaoshan are very high-grade tombs, pottery, which are used by civilians with fewer utensils, and jade, and there are also high-grade crown-shaped vessels.

As I said before, the crown device is in Liangzhu, and it is generally worn and used by the nobles who hold divine power or royal power.

At the very least, he had to be a high priest.

The trident and the group of taper are the crowns that match the crown, which is very Indian style.

It's just that the Indians put feathers on their heads, while the Liangzhu people made jade cones made of high-grade jade.

From the specifications of this tomb and the status of the nobility buried at the altar of Yaoshan, it can be judged that although the Liangzhu society attaches equal importance to royal power, military power and divine power, it is still dominated by divine power.

It belongs to the "theocracy above all else" mode of rule.

The unrestrained squandering of social wealth on the construction and activities of non-productive religious sacrificial facilities has hollowed out the foundation for the normal operation and sustainable development of the social organism, and has deprived society of the motive force for further development.

At the same time, the shamans who held the divine power did not rely on their own military and administrative skills to manage the country, but by paying sacrifices to the gods, talking to the gods, adhering to the will of the gods and personal imagination to achieve leadership.

This can be regarded as overturning the impression widely held in the academic community that the early Chinese civilization valued royal power and military power and rejected divine power.

The transmission of the shamanic religious tradition that Liangzhu has integrated is particularly remarkable.

The most important jade artifacts of Liangzhu, Cong and Bi, are widely popular in various places, and the images of fanged gods, dragon-like animals, sacred birds, and cicadas representing the transformation and feathering power of insects from the Liangzhu religion have been prominently represented in different ways in the Longshan culture, the Later Shijiahe culture, the Taosi culture and the Shiyuan culture, and jade has become an important carrier for the expression of power and hierarchy in these cultures.

These phenomena are reminiscent of the Mayan city-states that imitated the sacred site in Mesoamerica after the decline of the Teotihuacan civilization; and the widespread popularity of the new Quetzalcoatl belief after the decline of the Mayan civilization.

In fact, these shamanic religious elements were also inherited by later Chinese culture and continued until the late Shang Dynasty.

In fact, the Chinese civilization, like other primitive civilizations in the world, attaches the same importance to religious theocracy, and does not believe in "gods" as imagined, but only believes in the statements of their ancestors.

Of course, the influence of the Liangzhu culture should not be limited to religious traditions, the ruins of Shiyuan and the site of Yaowangcheng of Longshan culture also have the layout of the capital with two walls and high platforms, and the ruins of Yaowangcheng have found a similar bottom-paving stone construction technique as Liangzhu.

These are all techniques and layouts that will only appear under the influence of Liangzhu culture.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Liangzhu culture is an important part of Chinese civilization, and the emergence of the early state of Liangzhu is an important empirical evidence of Chinese civilization for more than 5,000 years.